Perhaps somebody has already posted about this and it's likely that alot of you know about it anyway, but I'm new and I havn't seen it mentioned yet. Sorry if i'm stating the obvious.

Over here in Britain there's a TV show called 'QI' (Quite Interesting) hosted by Stephen Fry. The idea is that celebrities are asked questions about subjects of general ignorance. Points are deducted for the most obvious and predictable answers.

During the last series one of the questions was 'What is the number of the beast?' (666 being the obvious and wrong answer). The oldest copy of the new testament (found quite recently I think) says that the number is actually 616. 616 had also been found in other copies but until now has been assumed to be a mistake.

I just think it's funny that 666 has been used for so long by devil worshippers and certain heavy metal bands. It's a credit to Mister Lavey that he has never acknowledged this number, and more less says it is wrong at the end of 'The Satanic Rituals'. Possibly he wrote this as to not make Satanism a mere inversion of christianity, but i think it's more likely that he knew 666 had no relevancy.

You're right that the number is irrelevant to Satanism. But it still pushes people's buttons so some Satanists use that fact to play with the herd's anxieties.

Although 6+6+6=18
1+8=9
9 being the true Satanic number. The number of the ego. My ego is quite the "Beast"

It's only relevant to people who make it relevant.

I myself don't see numbers of that sort to be relevant to anything besides superstition.

But, there are other numbers I DO find relevant, like the numbers on my paycheck!

I still get a kick out of this!

Can you imagine Aleister Crowley, just finding out this bit of information? I can see him doing Homer Simpson's "Doh!".

I think he would have played it off by dancing his way off stage in a silly manner like Ashley Simpson did when she was caught miming one of her songs.

He's used it for dramatic effect (see the film Satanis).

I was always under the impression that in The Unknown Known, Doktor was talking about folks like Richard Cavendish who claim Satan's number is "2".

Imagine some dark dusty copying room on a monastery a thousand years ago...

Some obscure bureaucrat-monk was translating a verse from Greek to Latin and could not find a word that rhymed to complete a sentence... after a couple of cups of wine he realized the number 666 (Or 616) sounded kind of good at the end of the paragraph.

So he put that down and finished his work, leaving the door open for future mystics to speculate and Iron Maiden to compose a song...

I suppose it could have been any number that scared christians so much. All symbolism comes froms someone's fairytale. Does anyone have a way of getting 9 from 616?

Every multiple of 9 has digits that add up to a lower multiple of nine and eventually gets back to 9 (i'm assuming this is what Lavey is talking about). This also works with the number 3 strangely enough.

No, but 6 + 1 + 6 = 13.

Ah Ha!

I'm a socrpio and the number of my sign is 9. I too have a beastly ego, although you would not know that not unless you get up close and personal. your information was comforting. Thank you. And to the one that said the only numbers that matter are the ones on his paycheck...hahahahahahahahahaha....classic.

I have a question...Is not the number 8 a reference of the Satanic Age?

There was a thread about this a while back (there's probably been a few).

Here.

Of course, this 6-6-6 thing is a matter of perspective. Sit across a table from a friend. You write the numbers 9-9-9 nicely spaced and large on a piece of paper in front of you. You are a Satanist and 9 is your number from where you sit at the bottom end of the table. Ask your friend across the table, sitting at the top end, playing the Christian sitting in heaven what number he sees without touching the paper.

It's all about perspective and it can make a man a god or a fearful slave!

IRI

The oldest copy isn't the original. Who knows what was on that.

Fun fact, as I posted in the original thread about this that lexi linked: In Common Greek, the language of the New Testament, numbers were written differently. The Ancients didn't have a decimal number system. Instead, the Greeks used letters as numbers, with a special mark over them to signify that they should be taken as numbers. The number we write as "666" was actually written χξς'. (Hope that prints. It's the Greek letters chi = 600, xi = 60, stigma = 6.) Or sometimes it was just written out in full, like we would write "six hundred and sixty six".

Not three sixes in a row; three different symbols. The Ancients wouldn't have understand why we see 666 when we see three 6's. They'd say, okay, I see a six, but where's the sixty, and where's the six hundred?

"616" would be χις'. (Chi, iota, stigma.)

If the guy who wrote the original knew how much he was gonna fuck with so many people's brains, perhaps he would of made it a little more interesting. I think Quentin Tarantino was born 1600 years too late.


I just realised that 3 doesn't always get back to itself because it has the one digit multiples 6 and 9. D'oh.

Numerology was never really than interesting. 616 OR 666. Mystical systems bother with numbers too much.

I only like numbers when they're descriptive of something about me or my life. I like 9 as the number of the Ego. Not very many other numbers though.